The ’90s were a special time for George Clooney. That was when he broke through on TV with ER, and then transitioned into movies with projects like From Dusk Til Dawn. Now he’s set to return to television, and to that decade, with a brand-new show about ’90s showbiz.

Clooney is teaming with Rescue Me creator Peter Tolan and director Bennett Miller on the project, described as a dark comedy. Get all the details on the George Clooney TV show after the jump. Read More »

Though The Monuments Men wasn’t the hit some people hoped it might be, George Clooney isn’t fazed. He’s still got a Best Picture Oscar for his work producing 2012’s Argo and now he and partner Grant Heslov set up a new project. They’re acquiring the remake rights to the 2013 Norwegian thriller Pioneer. The original film was directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and followed two brothers during the Norwegian oil boom in the 1980s. Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang were among the cast of the original; we don’t have any word on casting for the remake. Read More »

One of the highlights of each new Oscar season is the set of roundtable discussions created by THR. In each of these, the trade gathers a set of people involved in various films likely to be highlighted in the awards season, and just allows them to talk about making movies. They can be pretty great, especially since one byproduct of awards season is a tendency to talk about superficialities rather than substance, and these talks can really dig into the meat of making movies.

There’s a hell of a lot of great stuff in this second trailer for The Monuments Men. Start with George Clooney and Matt Damon building an “Ocean’s Eleven in WWII” squad to preserve and recover art stolen by the Nazis, and add guys like Bill Murray, John Goodman and Bob Balaban as members of the squad. But I think Cate Blanchett gets the win here, with her super droll question: “how can I help you steal our stolen art?”

Check out the full trailer for the December release below. Read More »

Briefly: A year ago not so many people knew Chris Terrio‘s name. He was a screenwriter with popular work on the Black List and a feature directorial credit to his name. (Heights, which went to Sundance in 2005.) But then Ben Affleck decided to direct Terrio’s script Argo, and things changed. Now Argo producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov are working with Terrio on a crime script, and they’ve got Paul Greengrass attached to direct.

Variety reports that Clooney is attached to star, and that the story is an original tale “set in the world of New York criminal syndicates.” We don’t have more detail than that. Greengrass first has to release Captain Phillips, the film he directed in which he and Tom Hanks dramatize the true story of an attack by Somali pirates. Clooney will next be in Gravity, and he’s set to direct and star in The Monuments Men, and is in talks for Brad Bird’s sci-fi film 1952.

George Clooney is known first and foremost an A-list movie star, but in the past decade he’s been earning praise for his work behind the camera as well. Clooney made his feature directing debut with 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and most recently helmed the well-received The Ides of March. Now he’s heading back to the director’s chair for The Yankee Comandante, based on an in-depth article from a recent edition of The New Yorker. More details after the jump.

George Clooney and his writing and producing partner Grant Heslov have an eye for slightly unconventional takes on classic film genres, and for Clooney’s next directorial effort they’re turning to an old standard: the World War II action film. But, in keeping with their general apporach to finding and telling stories, this one is just a bit different.

The Monuments Men is based on a true story about “art historians who landed at Normandy to rescue art looted by Adolf Hitler.” Read More »

You might think of Tom and Dick Smothers as cute old guys; a quaint, genial and humorously argumentative duo that played folk songs flavored with comedy on variety TV shows and as the stars of their own show in the ’60s. And they were that, but there’s a history to the Smothers Brothers that is easy to miss with forty years removed between their popular heyday and today.

On the face of it, the Smothers Brothers’ comedy seems incredibly tame by today’s standards. But the duo flirted with controversy for years, as they used their show to highlight emerging counterculture elements (with performances from the Who, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez) and laced their routines with satirical jabs at politics and mainstream culture of the time.

Now that sly counterculture aspect of the Smothers Brothers might be remembered once more as producing partners George Clooney and Grant Heslov have optioned the book Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story Of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to create a feature biopic about the brothers. Read More »

Ben Affleck bailed on acting in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby in order to direct his third film, a picture called Argo. (Good choice!) The film is from a Chris Terrio script that follows a true-life story about a CIA effort to pull diplomats out of Tehran in 1979. The hook: they use a plan that has them posing as a Hollywood studio crew making a sci-fi film called Argo. (Much more background detail is here.)

The first piece of casting (other than Ben Affleck, who is taking a role) is now out: Alan Arkin will play Lester Siegel, the OSS agent turned film producer who is key to the plan. The role is described as “equal parts bookie and rabbi,” in which case Alan Arkin is perfect. But then, when is he not close to perfect? George Clooney and Grant Heslov are producing the film, and if that conjures up images of the tone of Men Who Stare At Goats — another partially true military/political tale — then you’re probably thinking along the right track. Only, let’s hope, better. [Variety]

After the break, World War Z and the G.I. Joe sequel get new cast additions. Read More »

After the unexpected success of The Town, Ben Affleck found himself in the unique position of being an extremely hot director. Since then, he’s been circling or offered several different directorial projects including American Bullshit, Replay and Tales From The Gangster Squad but had yet to settle on his follow-up. That’s now changed. As was rumored back in February, Affleck’s next directorial effort will be Argo, a spy film based on the true story of how the CIA rescued American citizens from Tehran, Iran by pretending to make a sci-fi movie. He’ll both direct and reportedly star in the film, produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov from a script by Chris Terrio. Because he’s committing to this, Affleck won’t be able to star in Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. Read more after the break. Read More »